I doubt it's terrorism, Med - at least from what I'm seeing and reading on the internet. The Daily Mail article you linked to blames it on a possible faulty fridge. Looks more like a tragic accident, and at a time when the Fire Service budget had been severely cut by the conservative government of Teresa May, with over 10,000 firefighters axed in recent years.

My heart goes out to the victims and their families.

"Buy it cheap. Stack it deep""Any community that fails to prepare, with the expectation that the federal government will come to the rescue, will be tragically wrong." Michael Leavitt, HHS Secretary.

Currently the death toll is 12. The official line is: "That is expected to rise."

I have done nothing but watch this unfold all day. It appears to be a perfect storm:

The building had just been refurbished with plastic cladding to insulate it and to keep it dry. The cladding had an air gap behind it. Putting the pieces together, it appears that this combination acted as a venturi, funneling the fire upwards incredibly quickly.

The fire advice to residents was to stay in their homes if a fire broke out. The fire doors were expected to protect people until the emergency services arrived. That seemed to be based on the idea that any fire would climb up inside the building - via the stairwell. The building was originally concrete outside. It did not take into consideration the plastic cladding which had just been added and the acceleration of its 'handy little chimney' gap.

As if that were not enough. The fire broke out at about 1 in the morning. Most people were asleep.

The fire started in a residents flat - not terrorism - fairly low down, on the fourth floor. The resident whose flat the fire broke out in told this to his neighbor, whom he woke and evacuated. He said his fridge exploded! Apparently there had been many power surges in the building recently.

Apparently the fire alarm either did not go off, or was inaudible (same difference) as well.

The flats were home to about 600 people. I think we can say the death toll will rise - dramatically.

Horrifically, we do not need terrorism to wipe out whole populations. Apparently the residents had been unsuccessfully campaigning to improve the fire safety of the building. Tragically, no one was listening.

Well, this morning, they have revised the death toll DOWNWARD to 17 so far. That (reading between the lines) are just those who jumped to their deaths. Hundreds more are expected but there are not even reliable lists of residents!

The insulation turns out to have been polyeruethane foam with a coating of aluminum on the outer side, something like this:

| | | | | Aluminium burns fantastically hotly if an igniter is used.

| building | air gap | foam | aluminium |. That is a pretty good plan for building a rocket motor.

| | | | | They could have turned it into thermite if the aluminium was powdered.

The locals are starting to get very angry. This was the same insulation which was used on the tower block that went up so spectacularly in Dubai and in several other grand fires.

I have just watched a very erudite and expressive Muslim lady raging on screen about the avoidable deaths and how long it took for the bulk of the emergency services to arrive and the inappropriate emergency advice given out. She recorded everything on her phone, with time stamps. That might turn out to be particularily damming for some people.

I can see this getting out of hand very soon. People are very angry! The police force is very heavy around the area and around hospitals. Over 30 police around the Mayor of London when he spoke to the people and the prime minister is yet to talk to them. My guess is she won't as its too dangerous.

They are trying to hide the fact that around 150 are dead and around 50 are children. No wonder people are angry! Lily Allen (the singer) talked to the news and confirmed that it was getting down played. The media wouldn't broadcast it but you can find it online.

I can see riots soon. People are very angery and do not trust the 'rich' and the media.

There have been two, NOT ONE - TWO, separate protests in London, and, in a third incident, an angry mob tried to storm the local Council offices.

The people are VERY angry. They have every right to be!

The cladding had been proven unsafe: it was instrumental in several massive fires in other parts of the world. "Lessons will be learned." lied the authorities.

The residents knew their building was unsafe but had nowhere else to go. Their pleas went unheeded. They were poor folk after all. They knew they were considered unimportant, they just did not know how much.

The emergency advice was wrong.

The emergency equipment was faulty.

There were no sprinklers.

There were no fire escapes.

There were no contingency plans.

The death-toll is still unknown, though it is estimated to be over 87, and the bodies are so badly burned they may never be identified.

There has been an outpouring of help from the local community, even the very poor thereof - the borough has a mixture of very rich and very poor. They have donated food, medicines, baby supplies, money, clothes, the use of rooms in their own private houses and the free use of hotel rooms. Muslims took donations to the church, Christians to the Mosque, whichever was nearer. From the Council - nothing yet, not even a reasonable estimate of the death toll, just a litany of excuses like: "All appropriate safety measures were adhered to." I would call them names, if I could think of any bad enough.

The calousness of the Council and the housing association is monumental. There is a saying "Heads will roll" I only wish that were actual, not metaphorical. Never before have I seen it so well deserved, at least not since Hitler or Stalin.

Even the emergency services, who were on the scene within 6 minutes, could not get their equipment right up to the building because of road design. They were so out of their depth they were having to chose whom to save. As if the fire itself was not enough to breed nightmares.

They were not worthless, just because they were council tenants. They were people: people who burned or suffocated to death, or jumped from up to 22 floors up. (The three seconds of terror as they fell was preferable to the agony of burning.)

I think the whole country is enraged. Had hubby and I lived in England, we would be sitting on the pavement in London with the other protestors. This was so deeply wrong!

Corruption, greed, gangs, dishonesty, drugs: Our inner cities are ghastly. Out here in "the wilds" it is lovely. Full healthcare, no housing shortage, pleasant (distant) neighbors, some minor poverty but nothing life threatening or massively slanted away from the fair.

I think overpopulation/overcrowding are to blame for most of the rest. We are seriously overpopulated and when there are that many people around, they seem to lose their value to each other. This tiny island has nearly 70 million inhabitants. Scotland covers about 1/3 of the island and only has 5 million. Wales covers about 1/4 and is almost as empty. That means the rest is seriously stuffed, a bit like India and just as squalid.

To accentuate the horrors of the inferno, Kensington - the borough in which the tower block and its relatives housed the poor and unwanted - is the richest borough in the UK. Most of the disenfranchised accepted this with grace...................... Up until now. Now they are angry no, livid no, bloody enraged!

To add insult to injury, the estate where the fire was was among the poorest 10% in all the country, while the general area is one of the richest in the country. Disparity.

On a different note: I looked at some of the clips of the Queen visiting the area and was shocked by how frail she looked. There were some lovely pictures of the Queen dressed in blue talking to an old lady in a blue saree.

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